Schools use GPS trackers to stop class skipping

Stay in school, kids. If you don’t, your school will find a way to make sure you do.

The Anaheim Union High School District is considering using GPS tracking devices to clamp down on notorious class-skippers. In a six-week test, 7th- and 8th-grade students with four or more unexcused absences from this school year were given the trackers, OC Weekly reports.

Five times a day, students are instructed to punch in a code that tracks their location: when they leave for school, when they arrive at school, at lunch, when they leave school and at 8 p.m. Students in the program also receive phone calls every morning to remind them to go to school — because I’m sure most kids skip school because they forgot all about it, right?

School officials insist this system doesn’t liken kids to criminals, but fosters a sense of responsibility in them. The six-week test cost about $18,000 and was funded by a state grant. If its results are favorable, Anaheim schools and others may adopt the program permanently.

Skipping class has always been a problem, but now sites like the Skip Class Calculator (aimed at university students but also useful for high school students) make the practice even more expected.

But GPS tracking hardly seems like a plausible solution. The program is very expensive — not to mention invasive. And it probably won’t take kids long to realize they can give their tracker to a friend who’s at school if they want to skip. Whatever happened to good old-fashioned roll call anyway?